Satanic Verses

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Satanic Verses. Verses insinuated into the Qurʾān by al-Shaytān (Satan), when Muḥammad was uttering authentic verses. But God cancels (naskh) anything that Satan throws in.

The phrase has become notorious as the title of a novel by Salman Rushdie (1988), which elicited a fatwā from the Ayatollah Khumayni, placing the author under sentence of death—in effect for apostasy, followed by the bringing of Islam into ridicule—though more colloquially for blasphemy.